Posted on by David Steers

Faith and Freedom Issue 201

The latest issue of Faith and Freedom (Volume 79 Part 1, Issue 201, Autumn and Winter 2025) is now on its way to subscribers. Having been in print since 1947 we have now reached issue 201.

Rev Sidney Spencer by John Stanton Ward, Harris Manchester College, Oxford.

Sidney Spencer is a much neglected figure in twentieth-century Unitarian history and Jo James gives a comprehensive examination of his theological ideas. A Unitarian minister noted for his strongly pacifist witness both before and during the Second World War, with only limited formal academic credentials to his name he nevertheless became Principal of Manchester College, Oxford as well as one of the acknowledged world experts on mysticism. His interest in this subject resulted in a number of publications culminating in the Pelican Mysticism in World Religion in 1963, an influential work and something of a best seller in its day. Jo illuminates Spencer’s theology, sets it in its context and seeks out its relevance to the present day.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’, the famous trial which took place in Dayton, Tennessee when local teacher John Scopes was taken to court for teaching Darwin’s theories in his classes, contrary to the law of the state of Tennessee. John Midgley gives a timely account of this key event, forever made famous by the movie Inherit the Wind, starring Spencer Tracey.

One hundred years is a long time yet the whole case has many uncomfortable resonances in the present age and these perhaps feed into the current situation in the United States. Dan C. West, who has ‘lived through 15 presidents since the beginning of the Second World War’, gives a very insightful analysis of the current political, theological and cultural trends which mark America today.

How do we understand our place in the universe, how do we understand the universe itself in theological terms? Feargus O’Connor provides an excellent examination of Our Mysterious Universe: Accident or Design? looking at the philosophical notions that underpin the argument from design.

Following on from Barrie Needham’s article considering the Koran/Quran from Western, liberal Christian eyes in our last issue, we are pleased to include a response from Imran Usmani who brings considerable insight to the topic through his extensive researches on Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

We are delighted to once again include a number of reviews, including Peter B. Godfrey’s review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity; Peter’s review of the late Rev Art Lester’s  Thank God I’m an Agnostic: Trusting your Hunch about God, the Universe and All That and the editor’s review article on A Short History of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland. Including Sketches of Individual Congregations and a Fasti of Ministers who served in them by John Nelson.

You can take out a subscription via Nigel Clarke, our Business Manager, or online via PayPal. The details of how to subscribe can be found on our website here: https://www.faithandfreedom.org.uk/subs.htm

Posted on by David Steers

Belfast City Cemetery

I was pleased to again take part in a tour of Belfast City Cemetery led by Tom Hartley. Tom is now the author of four books on the cemeteries of Belfast and I was pleased also to pick up a copy of his latest work, More Stories from the Belfast City Cemetery. This was his penultimate tour of the last series he would give as part of the Féile an Phobail and like all these tours there was a very large attendance.

Start of the tour, showing some of those present

I see the first guided tour I attended was in March 2022. You can read that account here – Silent yet eloquent Memorials. There are a number of changes to the Cemetery made since that time, like the completion of the visitors’ centre, new signage all around the Cemetery, the restoration of the Vaults – which house the remains of such industrial luminaries as Sir Edward Harland and Thomas Gallaher – and a lot of new planting.

It is a very impressive cemetery, imaginatively laid out and designed by William Gay of Bradford in the shape of a bell (as in Belfast) and it contains some incredible Victorian, Edwardian and later memorials.

Gustavus Heyn, shipping magnate

Some parts are still quite heavily overgrown and other parts have suffered badly from vandalism.

The Jewish section of the graveyard comprises a separate walled section although this has particularly suffered from vandalism and since 1964 Jewish burials now take place at Carnmoney Cemetery.

Entrance to the Jewish Cemetery
Inside the Jewish Cemetery. On the right is the remains of the Tahara, the mortuary chapel

The Cemetery also includes a Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery with 296 burials from the First World War and 274 from the Second World War. There is also a Cross of Sacrifice (the same size as that in Botley Cemetery) and a First World War Screen Wall which carries the names of 74 soldiers who are buried in the First World War plot, 58 soldiers who are buried in unmarked graves and 8 soldiers who are buried elsewhere in the Cemetery.

Cross of Sacrifice
Part of the First World War Screen Wall
Second World War Royal Navy and Merchant Navy graves

There are a lot of significant people from Belfast’s past who were Non-Subscribing Presbyterians who are buried here, perhaps most notable are Lord and Lady Pirrie. Viscount Pirrie was the chairman of Harland and Wolff when the Titanic was built and was to have sailed with his nephew, the designer Thomas Andrews, on its maiden voyage, but was prevented from doing so by illness.

Grave of Lord and Lady Pirrie

I have written before about one of the most notable Non-Subscribing Presbyterian ministers buried here, the Rev John Scott Porter, and was pleased to hear from his great great great granddaughter as a result. He is buried with his brother, William, who was once the attorney general at the Cape Colony, and actually introduced at that time a franchise that was inclusive of all races. The Celtic Cross that marks their grave is one of the most impressive in the cemetery:

The grave of Rev John Scott Porter and William Porter

I also produced a short video about John Scott Porter at that time. This is available to view here:

Click above to see the video
The grave of Florence and Albert James Lewis, the parents of C.S. Lewis
The tour at the Vaults and Central Steps

Posted on by David Steers

‘Let divine worship be observed, by all who would aspire after the happiness of heaven’. 19th-century Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Hymnbooks

The title of this post comes from the Preface to A Collection of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs written by the Rev A.G. Malcolm for his hymnbook published in Newry in 1811.

Click on the video to explore Irish Non-Subscribing Presbyterian hymnbooks

Prior to about 1800 Non-Subscribing or New Light Presbyterian churches, in common with other Presbyterians, would have worshipped with a Psalter or Psalm book. The first distinctly Non-Subscribing hymnbook appeared in First Church in 1801. What is surprising about this publication is that in the same year Edward Bunting offered to supply an organ to the church. This offer wasn’t taken up although in just a few years the Second Congregation were to become the first church with an organ, First Church not acquiring one until 1853. The Rev William Bruce edited this collection and 1,200 copies were published. A choir seems to have led the singing which initially contained boys but was later expanded to include adults.

First Church’s Collection of 1801

William Bruce’s book contained 246 hymns, with an index of first lines and a brief one page table of subjects. The next hymnbook, the Newry edition of A.G. Malcolm, contained 405 hymns with a more substantial table of subjects running over eight pages. Plus it had an index of first lines with the names of authors (for example Barbauld, Watts, Doddridge, Kippis, Merrick, Wesley, Addison, Enfield) which showed the eclectic sources the book drew on from within Dissenting circles and beyond.

An interesting preface also explained their intentions:

…care has been taken, to select psalms and hymns, which treat of of the leading points both of faith and practice; and it is hoped, that the compilation will be found to contain a sufficient variety of the best compositions, in sacred poetry, adapted to all the principal subjects of Christian devotion.

A.G. Malcolm went on:

Correctness, both in sentiment and style, has also been made an object of considerable attention. Hence, many verses have been altered; and such psalms and hymns as seemed, in any degree, unsuitable to the simplicity and solemnity of divine worship have been omitted.

As the work is intended for general use, and must be expected to fall into the hands of persons, who unavaoidably differ from one another, in their opinions, on religious subjects, all expressions, which appeared likely to give offence to any sincere Christian, have been studiously avoided.

Interestingly the next hymnbook, dated Belfast, July 1818 and edited by Rev W.D.H. McEwen, made a similar point in a slightly more forceful way in its Preface:

Some doctrines are so offensive to the societies, for whose use this compilation is principally intended, that they are carefully avoided. As to others, the same scrupulosity is not observed; for, with respect to them, there may exist a diversity of sentiment. This selection may, therefore, be thought defective, but it will not disgust by a pertinacious obtrusion of doctrine.

So certain doctrines weren’t allowed to get in the way! Some were left out all together – the Trinity, the theory of the atonement based on penal substitution – and on some doctrines Non-Subscribers were able to agree to differ.

W.D.H. McEwen,s hymnbook

The book was published for the Presbytery of Antrim and the congregation of Strand Street, Dublin but it came from the minister of the Second Congregation. Curiously they had installed an organ in 1806 and had Edward Bunting as their organist from then until 1817. So they don’t appear to have had a hymnbook of their own for the first dozen years after installing the organ.

Following the establishment of the Remonstrant Synod of Ulster in 1830 Non-Subscribers moved towards the development of a hymnbook for all churches. This is Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns, for Christian Worship published in Belfast in 1841:

Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns, for Christian Worship 1841

This is the first edition of what became Hymns for Christian Worship, a book which went into at least four further editions before the end of the century and was followed by a supplement in 1899. Throughout this time this was the main series of hymnbooks in use in the churches in Ireland. More detail can be seen in the video above.

Posted on by David Steers

The Precentor’s Grave at Warrenpoint

On a recent visit to Warrenpoint I noticed this gravestone and took a picture. Carved, it would appear, on a sheet of slate, the inscription is sharp and clear and I initially assumed it would be older than the date actually indicated. I didn’t have much time to study it but I am glad I took a picture, it is a fascinating artefact, a tribute to a key member of this congregation for almost half a century.

Thomas Donnan, of Bellaughley, was the Precentor of the Warrenpoint Non-Subscribing Presbyterian congregation for 45 years up to his death in 1888. He was 60 when he died so he must have been just 15 when he commenced this work in 1843.

It’s an intriguing gravestone because while it clearly tells of the high esteem in which Thomas Donnan was held and the long period of time he faithfully led the congregation in their singing it opens up so many more questions. Who was he? Did he have a family? Did he have any formal training in music? Did he have any other responsibilities or source of income?

Although a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian congregation the First Presbyterian congregation of Warrenpoint must have hung on to their traditional worship forms in singing by being led by the Precentor for a long time, perhaps because Thomas Donnan provided such acceptable leadership to them in their music.

It’s interesting that close by in Newry the New Light minister the Rev A.G. Malcolm produced one of the first hymnbooks in use in any Presbyterian church in Ireland in 1811 with his Collection of Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs proper for Christian Worship; selected and arranged for the use of Congregations and Families. But this doesn’t seem to have been used in Warrenpoint.

In her tercentenary booklet of 2007 Across the Narrow Water (the congregation of Warrenpoint was originally known as Narrow Water) Elaine Crozier records that in 1841 the committee appointed ‘a teacher to teach the choir’ at a salary of £3 per year. Was this the prelude to the appointment of Thomas Donnan? Undoubtedly connected with his eventual appointment was a decision in 1842 that ‘the new collection of psalms compiled by the Remonstrant Ministry be put into the hands of the families belonging to the church.’ This would be the 1841 publication Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns, for Christian Worship published in Belfast by the Bible Christian (the main Non-Subscribing Presbyterian journal), Rosemary Street. It must have been this book that provided the basis for congregational singing in Warrenpoint led by Thomas Donnan although the book was gradually expanded as the century wore on with hymns from other sources. All this took place during the long and effective ministry at Warrenpoint from 1836 to 1867 of the Rev Samuel Moore. Born in Rademon and educated at Glasgow University he enjoyed some success as minister of Warrenpoint although the congregation faced the heavy difficulties of the Famine during his ministry.

From 1843 onwards, though, Thomas Donnan was leading the praise. If they were using Psalms, Paraphrases, and Hymns, for Christian Worship they had already taken a step away from using a traditional Psalter and this does, perhaps, suggest that the Precentor was also leading a choir. But there at the centre of their congregational life was this young man appointed at the age of just 15 and leading the congregation’s worship for the next 45 years to their evident satisfaction

Posted on by David Steers

The Antrim Meeting of 1626 and Rowel Friers

A recent post looked at the two wonderful Rowel Friers cartoons which hang on the wall of the Library in Dunmurry, as well as the video which explains the story about them. As the post explains these pictures were commissioned by the Rev William McMillan for his impressive Exhibition illustrating the history of the Presbytery of Antrim held in January 1976.

It must have been an attractive display in the McCleery Hall, the Rev Mac sourced portraits, books, communion plate, swords and pikes from the ’98 Rebellion, sculptures by Rosamond Praegar, commmunion tokens, copper collecting pans and all sorts of material from all over Northern Ireland. There was even a mould for making eighteenth-century communion tokens from Ballycarry and – something I had not previously heard of – an eighteenth-century family token box, described as ‘a wooden box holding a small leadbox in which the token was taken to the meeting house.’

One feature of the Exhibition for the 250th anniversary of the Presbytery of Antrim is that there were in fact three, not two, Rowel Friers cartoons included. Unfortunately one of these has been missing for fifty years. However, we have now discovered a photograph of the lost picture and this features in our latest video:

Click on the video to see the video about the 1626 Antrim Meeting

The Exhibition was held in January 1976 and covered both the creation of the Presbytery of Antrim in 1725 and its separation from the Synod of Ulster. It was also intended to cover the anniversary of the creation in 1626 of the original Antrim Meeting. The Exhibition must have been fascinating but unfortunately in that pre-digital age there were very few photographs taken. There is only one that shows the Exhibition in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian magazine at the time:

Betty Kelly at the Exhibition in the McCleery Hall in 1976

There were a large number of dignitaries invited to the dinner that followed the Exhibition, representatives of all denominations, figures in public life, historians and international figures. Many of the speeches are recorded in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian magazine and the Rev John Radcliffe, clerk of the Synod, made reference to the third Rowel Friers cartoon:

‘There are two extreme forms of the expression of religious sentiment. There is one that is very well expressed in the person here described: “His mind and voice had precisely the fluid quality of some clear, subtle liquid: one felt it could flow around anything and overcome nothing.” That is the extreme of presenting the Christian faith in such delightfully attractive style, with such a fluency of language, with such a vividness of imagery, that it will flow around anything and overcome nothing. At the other extreme there is another sort of Christianity, corybantic Christianity. There is a cartoon on the wall there, a drawing of four rather austere clerics, and the date is 1626. Outside you see somebody rousing a rabble – not unheard of in these days. The four rather serious looking clerics are trying to bring a bit of reason into it all; and the man outside is an exponent of corybantic Christianity, the Christianity that is the direct oppposite of that I have been describing tonight – and appeals all the time to the emotions in which people get carried away, and leads in the end to a very dangerous, in fact terrible, fanaticism – the very negation of the Christian spirit.’

Detail from the photograph

It is a fascinating footnote to our previous post and video about our Rowel Friers cartoons, another part of the story that takes us back even further in time, in this case to 1626.

Posted on by David Steers

Mountpottinger 150th Anniversary

I’ve blogged before about Mountpottinger – most notably here and here where more details about its history can be seen – it is an interesting building on a prominent site in that part of Belfast and the congregation has a very distinctive history. Today the building is leased to the Bright Umbrella Drama Company who are turning the old school hall into the Studio Theatre and the church itself into the Sanctuary Theatre. But the congregation still has a place on the premises and the exact date of the anniversary of the opening of the building – 3rd January 2025 – was the occasion for this remarkable celebration of the 150 years of Mountpottinger.

Adrian Moir introduces the evening

A lot of credit must go to Adrian Moir, the church secretary and former ‘Warden of the Fabrique’, as the Very Rev Charlie Kelly once termed him, who wrote and narrated this excellent celebration of the life of the congregation. It was a very positive collaboration between the church and the Drama Company which brought the history of the church to life covering three themes:

Foundation and Hope

Tragedy and Remembrance

Adapting to the times and a glimpse of the future

Trevor Gill delivers the Rev David Maginnis’s speech at the opening of the building in 1875. David Maginnis was a controversial but effective minister at York Street who came back to Belfast from Stourbridge to participate in the opening ceremony

The evening was interesting, engaging and witty and also very moving as it looked at the story of Ellen Mary Davies, the wife of the Rev William Jenkin Davies, who died tragically young and in whose memory the school room was built.

Memorial in the School Room

Lindsay Charrington playing the role of Ellen Mary Davies

There was further tragedy with the loss of members of the church in the First World War, including Captain James Samuel Davidson in 1916, on the first day of the battle of the Somme. Also remembered on the evening was church member Sydney Agnew who was killed during the ‘Troubles’ in 1971 to prevent him giving evidence at a trial. It was both fitting and touching that members of Sydney’s family were there to lay a wreath in his memory.

Glenn McGivern writing home from the front as Captain J.S. Davidson

But the whole evening was very impressive, a fitting tribute to 150 years of work and witness which now has the opportunity to be part of a brave new venture as a community hub working in the arts and in drama in the Mountpottinger area.

One of the ‘Regal Heads’ of Mountpottinger

Posted on by David Steers

Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism in the Early Modern World

I was very pleased to be asked to contribute to this book which has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan:

Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism in the Early Modern World

The publishers describe the volume in these terms:

This collection offers an innovative and fresh interpretation of Antitrinitarian and rational dissent in the early modern world. The central themes focus on the fierce debates surrounding Antitrinitarianism and Unitarianism that emerged from the Reformation and the lived cultures of these dissenting movements. The chapters take an interdisciplinary approach addressing ideas in context, their reception and appropriation, and the diverse and often conflicting visions of Christianity. Drawing on previously unused sources, many from Eastern Europe and often in inaccessible languages, this book challenges our understanding of dissent as marginal and eccentric and places it at the center of contesting convictions about the nature of religious reform.

The contents are as follows:

Introduction

The Porous Boundaries of Dissent

Bruce Gordon

Antitrinitarianism and Its Influence in Italy and Poland

Italian Antitrinitarianism and the Legitimacy of Dissent

Odile Panetta

Scripture, Piety, and Christian Community in the Thought of the Polish Brethren

Sarah Mortimer

Religiosity in the Ethos of Polish Brethren in Light of Funeral and Wedding Speeches from the Seventeenth Century

Maria Barłowska

True Heirs of Jan Łaski: Polish Brethren Church Discipline in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and During Their Exile in Transylvania

Kazimierz Bem

Transylvanian Unitarianism

The Late Confessionalization of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church and the Polish Brethren

Gizella Keserű

Introduction to the Transylvanian Unitarian Disciplina Ecclesiastica

Lehel Molnár

De Disciplina Ecclesiastica: On Ecclesiastical Discipline (1626)

Alexander Batson

The Term, Development, Purpose, and Practice of Church or Canonical Visitation: Unitarians in Háromszék in the Seventeenth Century Between Conventional Rhetoric and Reality

Lehel Molnár

Some Aspects of the Hungarian Unitarian Liturgy in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries

Sándor Kovács

Engagement and Divorce Cases Before the Unitarian Consistory in Seventeenth-Century Transylvania. Frameworks in Church Law and the Doctrine of Marriage

David Szigeti Molnar

England, Ireland, and New England

The Historical Critique of Heresiology in the Seventeenth Century and the Origins of John Milton’s Arianism

R. Bradley Holden, Samuel J. Loncar

Authority, Reason, and Anti-trinitarianism: John Abernethy and the Competing Pressures Within Irish Presbyterianism in the Early Eighteenth Century

A. D. G. Steers

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and Its Adaptation in Eighteenth-Century Rational Dissent

Bryan Spinks

New England Congregationalists and Unitarianism in Late Eighteenth Century/Early Nineteenth Century

Peter Field

The editors are:

Kazimierz Bem, Pastor of First Church in Marlborough (UCC), USA and a senior lecturer in Church History at the Evangelical School of Theology in Wrocław, Poland.

Bruce Gordon, Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School, USA.

  Hardcover ISBN978-3-031-69657-2

  Softcover ISBN978-3-031-69660-2

  eBook ISBN978-3-031-69658-9

You can find out more about this book via this link.

Posted on by David Steers

John Wesley and Belfast

In the latest of our videos exploring the Very Rev William McMillan Library at Dunmurry we take a (brief) look at the eight volumes of the Journal of John Wesley. In particular we look at his visits to Belfast and his relationship with the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian churches in Belfast.

Exploring the Library at Dunmurry, episode 4. Click on the video above

John Wesley visited Belfast 11 times in the course of his career, always preaching in the town, sometimes in the market-house, sometimes in the open air. Often it seems he visited at times of cold, windy or wet weather. Only once did he preach in a church and the only church to ever be open to him was First Presbyterian Church, Rosemary Street. But this visit was mired in controversy and was not repeated. I am grateful to Des McKeown of First Church who recently gave me a copy of a letter to The Northern Whig dated 3 December 1873 written by the minister of First Church, the Rev John Scott Porter. This features in the video and it is interesting to see his opinion of Wesley’s visit almost one hundred years previously.

A youthful John Scott Porter

But another feature of Wesley’s Journal is his identification of followers of Dr John Taylor in the crowds that came to hear him in Belfast. John Taylor was minister of the Octagon Chapel in Norwich and the author of the The Scripture Doctrine of Original Sin. What are the implications of this in Belfast in the 1760s? We try to unpack the meaning of this for John Wesley’s reception in Belfast in the video.

John Taylor (Source: Wikipedia)

Posted on by David Steers

Liverpool Unitarians: Faith and Action

This book (first published, I now realise, back in 2014!) has just been reprinted and, the original print run having sold out, is once again available. The publishers and printers have done an excellent job, it’s an attractive book, this time published in memory of Bernard Cliffe, Len Mooney and Rev Daphne Roberts, three contributors who have died since the original publication.

The full list of contributors and subjects is as follows:

Introduction, David Steers; Memorials of the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth Park, Bernard Cliffe; Jeremiah Horrocks 1618 – 1641, Bernard Cliffe; William Roscoe 1753 – 1831, David Steers; A Short History of the Rathbone Family, Annette Butler; The Unitarian Family of George Holt, Bernard Cliffe; Noah Jones 1801 – 1861, Philip Waldron; James Martineau 1805 – 1900, Len W. Mooney; Joseph Blanco White 1775 – 1841, David Steers; Kitty Wilkinson 1786 – 1860, Daphne Roberts; John Johns 1801 – 1847, David Steers; William Henry Channing 1810 – 1884, Richard Merritt; Charles Pierre Melly 1829 – 1888, John Keggen; Sir Henry Tate 1819 – 1899, Richard Merritt; Sir John Brunner 1842 – 1919, Len W. Mooney; Lawrence Redfern 1888 – 1967, Elizabeth Alley; Sir Adrian Boult 1889 – 1983, Richard Merritt; The Visitors’ Book of the Ancient Chapel, Bernard Cliffe.

Published by the Merseyside District Missionary Association the cover design is by Alison Steers and the book contains over 50 illustrations, many published here for the first time.

To accompany the republication we have produced a short video which incorporates a trip around Ullet Road Church which can be seen here:

Click on the video for a tour of Ullet Road Church and details of the book
The cover of the book

Liverpool Unitarians: Faith and Action Essays exploring the lives and contributions to society of notable figures in Liverpool Unitarian history

Edited by Daphne Roberts and David Steers

Published by Merseyside and District Missionary Association

ISBN: 978-0-9929031-0-7

Brand new edition for 2024

Price £10 (plus £2 post and packing). Available from Rev Phil Waldron, Ullet Road Church, 57 Ullet Road, Sefton Park, Liverpool. L17 2AA.

In the Introduction I say:

This book is not intended to be hagiography but it does try to outline how one group of people – members of a particular faith community with deep historical roots but with an aversion to fixed creeds – were inspired to serve their fellows in different ways. Their legacy can be seen all over the city – in its parks, in its monuments, in the university, in hospitals, in education, in art galleries and museums – and it exists in the long and continuing struggle to create a society that gives equality and opportunity to all its citizens. It is not meant to be an exhaustive account of all the eminent members of the churches and chapels in the region. Readers will notice that the names mentioned are part of wider connections of family and business which includes many others who could be included. There are other figures who could be the subject of such biographical accounts. But this is a selection of some of those who have followed the call of faith to be of service to wider society.